What if death wasn’t just the end? Not of breath, not of body, but of story. That’s the unsettling, poetic lens David Eagleman gives us in Metamorphosis, a story from his book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. In a deceptively simple narrative, Eagleman transforms the abstract weight of mortality into a strangely mundane yet eerily profound setting: a waiting room. But not just any waiting room—this is the space between memory and oblivion. And it’s where you sit until your name is spoken for the last time on Earth.

That’s the third death.

Eagleman describes death in three parts. The first is physical: the body ceases to function. The second is ceremonial: the body is buried or cremated. The third is existential and haunting—it is the final time your name is ever spoken aloud, when you’re remembered no more. Only then are you truly, permanently gone.

In this afterlife, you remain in a waiting area that resembles an infinite airport lounge. It’s neither heaven nor hell, just a holding pen where you sip tea or coffee, eat cookies, and talk to others who, like you, are suspended in memory. People from all over the world sit together—each bound by remembrance, each dreading or yearning for the Callers, who call names like airport agents announcing flights.

The Callers read out names, and when they do, it means no one left on Earth remembers that person anymore. That’s the end. The real end. And so the chosen slump out of the room, their faces shattered like plates glued back together, maybe with a little hope, maybe just resignation. Where they go, no one knows. No one returns to report. Their exits are final.

It’s a stunning metaphor for the persistence—and eventual fading—of identity. Because in this room, identity is memory. Not yours, but others’. You live only as long as someone remembers your name. And so, in this liminal space, time isn’t measured in hours or days but in mentions, stories, anecdotes, and fading recollections.

Some people leave right as their loved ones arrive, a cruel timing that brings a touch of cosmic irony. And in that shared disappointment, people just shake their heads—it’s always like this, they seem to say. Love arrives late. Farewell comes too soon.

Yet what makes this story truly unsettling isn’t just its reimagining of death, but its meditation on legacy. What becomes of us when our stories are told by others? When we are remembered not as we were, but as we are imagined? For some, this is a curse.

The farmer who drowned two centuries ago is still stuck in the room, not because he was beloved, but because a college was built where he once lived. Tour guides spin his tale weekly, and each retelling morphs him further from himself. The version of him being remembered isn’t his true self—he doesn’t recognize it. And yet, that story is what keeps him tethered. There’s no rest in remembrance when it’s misremembered.

The woman across the way is hailed as a saint, but she knows her heart held darker truths. The man by the vending machine has gone from war hero to villain to misunderstood icon, his public image zig-zagging across time and politics. Each of them waits with a kind of desperation—not for immortality, but for erasure. Because as long as someone remembers them inaccurately, they’re stuck in this fluorescent-lit purgatory, unable to move on.

That’s the paradox Eagleman lays bare. We all long to be remembered. We write books, carve names into stone, build statues, and leave digital footprints. But once we are remembered, we become prisoners of those memories—not as we were, but as we are interpreted.

And so this infinite waiting room becomes not just a place of delay, but a place of distortion. A space where memory becomes mythology, and the self becomes a stranger. It is a quietly horrifying thought: that we may be immortal, but only in the minds of others—and only as they imagine us.

But not everyone dreads the Callers. Some beg for them. Some have lingered too long, worn down by centuries of false remembrance, aching for the moment when their name will finally fall silent. They throw themselves at the Callers’ feet, desperate to be forgotten and finally free. For them, obscurity is not loss—it’s liberation.

Eagleman’s metaphor makes us confront uncomfortable truths about legacy and the afterlife. The story strips away religious iconography, removes divine judgment, and replaces it with something more human: memory. It suggests that the afterlife may not be about harps or fire, but about being trapped in the minds of others. And the only salvation may be to be forgotten altogether.

And yet, there’s something beautiful here too. In this room of echoes, you’re never truly alone. The company is extraordinary. Conversations bloom. Cultures blend. The world’s history sits beside you. The place, while sterile, buzzes with life. There is time to talk, time to remember, time to reflect—until time, eventually, forgets.

In Metamorphosis, Eagleman doesn’t just imagine an afterlife—he crafts a mirror for our fears and desires around being remembered. It’s not a ghost story. It’s a story about identity, legacy, and the quiet, inevitable fading that awaits us all.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe the third death isn’t something to fear, but something to accept. Because in that final silence, we are no longer distorted. We are no longer bound. We are, at last, free.

Sum is a must-read not only for those curious about death, but for anyone who lives between science and spirituality. It bridges the two with grace and imagination—no dogma, no doctrine, just bold thought experiments wrapped in lyrical storytelling. Whether you are religious, scientifically inclined, or somewhere in between, this book offers something rare: room to wonder.

Credit: This piece is inspired by David Eagleman’s short story “Metamorphosis” from Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.